It’s a new day at Nina Ricci. After years of either inconsistent visions of various creative directors or viral ideas that never went beyond the runway, the historic Parisian maison needs an assertive path to take in order to be a name that sparks true interest and desirability among contemporary customers. Harris Reed, the young designer known for his gender-fluid approach at his highly-dramatic, London-based namesake label, and dressing super-stars like Harry Styles and Florence Pugh, is here to refresh Nina Ricci. His debut collection was a loud and bold statement filled with over-the-top shapes, eye-popping colours and psychedelic prints. First modeled by Styles at the BRITs, the tailoring looked like it took its cues from Bianca and Mick Jagger’s matching 1971 wedding suits – down to the extra-wide brimmed hats. Runway-spanning circle skirts leaned perilously close to costume, just like most of the offering. And then there was the show-closing hobble skirt – the model who wore it deserves a prize for not toppling over. Except for all the camp-y looks and downpour of gimmicks, there was no depth in this debut or wider understanding of the brand. Not speaking of actual ready-to-wear, which was pretty much non-existent… Where Reed is way out ahead of most of the Parisian brands is with his cast. Precious Lee opened the show, and as she vamped for the cameras, it was a reminder of the too narrow and old-fashioned visions of beauty seen elsewhere this week. Clothes-wise, Reed has a long, long way to go.
Collage by Edward Kanarecki. Don’t forget to follow Design & Culture by Ed on Instagram!
Thankfully, we’ve got Jonathan Anderson, one of the most exciting innovators in contemporary fashion, gracing us with his brilliant Loewe collections. His recent, absolutely out-of-this-world menswear collection filled me with hope that in fashion, it’s still possible to do something completely new. The autumn-winter 2023 womenswear collection is a beautiful, multi-faceted, and disturbing-in-a-good-way continuation of Anderson’s vision he proposed back January. “It’s a bit like the ghost of fashion,” said the designer. “This idea of the past and where we are now. Couture classicism meeting something which is new.” Anderson was out to trick the eye of the internet with his Loewe “ghosts”—simple white duchess satin shifts over-printed with blurry images of 1940s, maybe ’50s cotton frocks, a mackintosh, a fur coat. Each had blank margins. “Printing a garment on a garment is not a new thing. But I was fascinated about the psychology of how we ultimately see things online. The blurry aspect in motion looks like a glitch,” he said. “It’s out of focus. Is it staged, or not staged? Is it the right color, is it photoshopped?” What’s real, and what’s fake? That’s the question Anderson reflects on for the last couple of seasons (remember the super-fake-slash-natural anthuriums?). The designer had fun with that, warping anachronistic haute couture techniques and generic dress types to make ‘T-shirts’ and ‘jeans’ entirely of angelic goose-feathers, and three strapless velvet cocktail dresses calculated to look flat and normal on screen, but which had a stiff, tubular stand-away volume in reality. There was more eye-trickery when a couple of ‘ordinary’ cardigans – one pink, one turquoise – turned up: in fact, they’d been printed out on adhesive paper, and literally stuck on the models’ skin. Then there were tiny, seamlessly molded jackets, which Anderson described as “like Playmobil.” Unless you touched them, you’d hardly realize they’d actually been made from super-fine leather, vacuum-formed the same way as luxury car upholstery. Pushing techniques until they aren’t what they seem, through a combination of traditional skills, new technologies and a searching imagination is something that only a top-notch modern luxury house can do, of course. Still, for Anderson, the point of showing all of that facility was to drive beyond surreal effects. “How do you go out of a surrealist aspect to something which is more about how we see clothing now? I think it’s kind of like a type of reduction,” he said. “Wanting to refine, and refine.”
“I’ve been 10 years here at Loewe. You kind of you start to be like, ‘Well, ‘what is that next chapter like?’” His answer this season was to go fully into the fine leather and suede which are the brand’s heritage. “I feel like in the beginning that was something that I kind of went away from,” he said. “Whereas now, it’s about implementing it back in.” He had some fun with that, too: a brown leather shirt was hybridized with a bag, with a hitched-up shoulder strap attached to its tail. Funny. It didn’t distract, though, from all the rest: the perfect leather tank, the long camel suede coat, the giant geometric leather totes, the renewed, retooled long, shallow ‘Paseo’ bag and the deep cylindrical suede shoulder bag that Anderson had found in the archive. Perhaps that’s what he meant when he made that remark at the beginning: the excitement of “classicism meeting something which is new.”
Collage by Edward Kanarecki. Don’t forget to follow Design & Culture by Ed on Instagram!
The Magda Butrym wardrobe keeps on evolving and expanding, always keeping it true to the idiosyncratically feminine style of the brand. The autumn-winter 2023 look-book’s spotlight-stealer award goes to all the outerwear the Polish designer has in offer for the new season: from the gorgeous, floor-sweeping suede shearling coat to the fluffy hooded jacket, there’s plenty to love. The winter-ready, layered look is even more convincing when styled with slinky, body-fitting dress or a pair of not-that-casual leggings. Speaking of eveningwear, the collection is filled with Butrym’s all-time classics, like the red mini-dress with floral drapings and hand-made crotchet ensembles, but there’s also the new star: the black, body-baring column dress with a blooming rose sticking out of the bra part. Styled with a chic headband (like in case of most of the looks), there’s something very Loulou de La Falaise about this entire silhouette. I wonder which actress will pick that dress for the red carpet.
By the way, have you seen my footwear collage campaign for Magda Butrym? If not, check it out here, here, and here!
Collage by Edward Kanarecki. Don’t forget to follow Design & Culture by Ed on Instagram!
At the Isabel Marant fashion show, you had a comforting feeling of familiarity and were reminded who is the epitome of true coolness in Paris. The runway classics, from Anna Selezneva and Liya Kebede to Malgosia Bela and Sasha Pivovarova, hit the autumn-winter 2023 runway in quintessentially Marant designs. Square shouldered blazers, oversized parkas, boyish sweaters, ’80s cocoon coats, conical heeled boots, slinky dresses, denim boiler suits and a killer trousers shape with straight yet slouchy legs. The list goes on. Isabel Marant has long championed female empowerment in everything her label stands for, and that includes making the kind of louche, sexy but always spiritedly casual look that focuses on allowing the woman wearing her clothes to express herself and her physicality. In a season where the everyday and the real are being celebrated and elevated, where good clothes can matter and not be disposable, Marant cannily underscored how much she’s been doing that for years now. That, plus the casting of models who are her stalwarts, women who’ve been around a bit but still look utterly fab, not to mention the celebratory atmosphere of her show, translated into the fact that wearing Isabel Marant means looking good and feeling good at the same time.
Collage by Edward Kanarecki. Don’t forget to follow Design & Culture by Ed on Instagram!
Schiaparelli‘s very couture-ish prêt-à-porter goes runway. “The higher you go in the stratosphere of luxury, the more basic it feels,” Daniel Roseberry, the brand’s creative director, declared. The collection retained many of the signatures Roseberry has established in his first three years at the house, some inspired by Schiap’s codes and some by those of other Paris couturiers: the gold buttons in the shape of keyholes and body parts, the measuring tape embroidery, the cone bra detailing inset into everything from bustier tops to jean jackets. Roseberry’s own whimsical drawings were hand-painted onto nipped waist boiled coats. The places-to-go sensibility remained as well, but no-one is wearing Schiap leggings to a hot yoga class, or doing the school run in the dark-rinse denim sets. The parkas aren’t hitting the slopes. These were lunch date, cocktails, and stepping out of the car and into the five-star hotel with the paparazzi hot on your tail clothes. Where it differed from the couture most significantly was in the fabrications. The jersey dresses, one with a keyhole on the chest and the other with miniature gold buttons marching up the torso, had an appealing ease; Roseberry called the stretch velvet of a brown halterneck dress a celebrity secret weapon: “it drinks the light.” Chic!
Collage by Edward Kanarecki. Don’t forget to follow Design & Culture by Ed on Instagram!
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